alt Hacker NewsUS inventiveness peaked in the 50s and 60s, when corporate taxes were much higher, education, housing and healthcare were far cheaper, wealth was more evenly distributed, and government investment in infrastructure and R&D was more about delivery than corporate/academic grift.
Perhaps there's a reason it has declined since.
Replies
> wealth was more evenly distributed,
Maybe…of course, those were also decades where companies would comp executives with cars, apartments, vacation homes, &c. Plus other perks like expensing ‘business meetings’ at strip clubs.
> US inventiveness peaked in the 50s and 60s
How does one even measure that? And who would even try and claim that?
> when corporate taxes were much higher
The corporate tax rates in the 70s and 80s were just as high as they were in the 50s and 60s [0]. And the capital gains taxes were actually lower during the 50s and 60s than they were in the 70s and 80s. Why did inventiveness stop if the higher tax rates were helpful?
1952-1963 Over $25,000 52%
1975-1978 Over $50,000 48% ($50k in 1978 is ~$21k in 1952)
But surely Reagan did some bad things, right?
The maximum tax rate on capital gains was capped at 34 percent for 1987
From April 1, 1954, through Calendar Year 1969, the maximum tax rate on capital gains was 25 percent.
Grift in the 50s and 60s was pervasive and everywhere. Eisenhower was warning about the Military Industrial Complex in 1961.
[0] https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/historical-corpor...
100% disagree.
SmartPhones, Cloud, AI.
Just three things that happened in the past 20 years and were brought to the world by US companies.
Also post war Europe had to rebuild, the US didn't - and lots of scientists headed west.
> healthcare were far cheaper
In the 60s people would often die from ailments that are now solved with routine outpatient procedures.
Cars were cheaper too but it turns out all that emissions and safety equipment costs money.